


Coaching Tiger, Hidden Vampire

by Beauregard_Q_Smuttington



Series: Young and Unafraid [1]
Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator, Metalocalypse (Cartoon), Monster Prom (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, Musical References, Slice of Life, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 10:31:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20172790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beauregard_Q_Smuttington/pseuds/Beauregard_Q_Smuttington
Summary: Liam finds unexpected musical common ground with Coach.





	Coaching Tiger, Hidden Vampire

**Author's Note:**

> We gonna try somethin' different. This series is gonna be an anthology of short little micro-stories. Fun ideas I have that don't necessarily have enough substance to be a proper story on their own, but might collectively add up to something you can sink your teeth into.
> 
> My first time playing with the series functionality, but you can't rate chapters individually. These are gonna vary wildly ranging from wholesome slice-of-life to smut, with this first entry being the former, so it seemed imprudent to slap an Explicit rating on the whole shebang.

Coach took great pride in taking proper care of his balls. The two-tiered rack of dodgeballs gleamed like a beacon of truth in an otherwise cold and uncaring universe. Each bright red orb had been meticulously inflated to the regulation 1.8 psi, wiped clean of blood, sweat and scuff-marks, disinfected, polished and laid out on the metal fixture with the 8.5” blockers on the lower rack and the 5” stingers on the upper one. It was almost enough to bring a tear to the sentimental old tiger’s eye.

He turned his back to the rack to gaze out upon his gymnasium. The court had been cleared of unconscious students, caltrops, shell casings and other non-regulation ordnance which had a habit of showing up on the field of honor and also dodgeball. He nodded, satisfied that he had done all he could for the day. The rest was in the hands of Crazy Martin the Were-Bear Janitor, who had never let him down before in all their years on the faculty together.

He turned to head for his office, but his ears perked up as he heard conversation from beneath the bleachers. He walked around to the end where the space beneath was accessible, to make certain everything was alright and to remind whoever was hanging out under there not to linger after school closed, Martin got surly whenever nocturnal roamers accidentally set off the perimeter defenses. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but couldn’t help catching the tail end of Liam lecturing Zoe about audio quality.

“The medium has just gotten too digital. It has no _soul_. You’re better off going completely analog. It takes time and money to set up a turntable with a good tube amplifier, but it’s well worth it. It just has a more open, natural sound, you know? Much warmer tones…”

Zoe nodded, her pencil moving ceaselessly and her head lowered to look down at her notebook, glancing up occasionally. She was only half-listening; in truth she had asked him about music as a ruse in order to get him talking so she could pick his brain a little for research for the purposes of an upcoming AU fic where he and Damien were the feuding creative forces in a struggling rock band. She had gotten more than she needed and was now sneaking in some sketches of him for reference while trying to come up with a polite way to bow out of the conversation.

Fortunately, she was rescued when Coach heard the word ‘turntable’. “Students!” His distinctive, jolly baritone made both of them jump. Zoe leaned to one side to glance around Liam, who turned his head to look back over his shoulder. “I didn’t know you young folk still listened to records! I thought it was all iThises and mp5thats nowadays.”

Liam exercised an impressive display of eye-rolling, letting out a sigh that he didn’t seem to expend effort to expel so much as just open his mouth and let fall out. “Firstly, Coach, I’m older than you are and object to being categorized as ‘young folk’. Secondly, _most_ people today ****don’t**** put any care or consideration into audio fidelity, that’s what makes them the unenlightened masses. I was just explaining to Zoe here that-” He turned to look at her, and saw only the very end of a purple tentacle escaping upwards between the gaps in the bleachers as she took advantage of his moment of engagement with Coach to ditch them.

The condescension was, as usual, lost on the upbeat educator. “Well heck, I’ve got a fairly impressive record collection myself! You’re welcome to browse it any time and see if there’s anything you might like to borrow.”

Loathe as Liam was to show enthusiasm about anything, much less to someone who could be perceived as an authority figure, his interest was piqued. He’d already plundered every record store in a three-city radius. Buzzcut Molly over at Vinyl Fantasy VII had graciously agreed to keep an eye out for ‘weird shit’ on his behalf, but there was no guarantee of that turning up results anytime in the immediate future. The opportunity to peruse a private collection probably shouldn’t be squandered. One never knew from whence a diamond in the rough might come. “…sure. Why not.” Standing and tip-toeing his way out between supports, he grimaced and adjusted his glasses as Coach clapped him enthusiastically on the back when he emerged.

“That’s the spirit, son! Come on, let me just grab my keys and close up the office.” He set off at a brisk power-walk, with Liam trailing behind him and huffing about being called ‘son’. Again, he was several hundred years older than Coach…but also frozen at a younger age, so also perpetually younger? He decided to drop trying to correct him on it, if for no other reason than to save time.

Coach took a quick duck into his office on the way out to procure his coat and hat, a tan overcoat and brown fedora which he tossed over his forearm and took in hand respectively but did not don. Locking the door, he led the <strike>young</strike> old vampire out the side door at the rear of the school to the parking lot. Sitting in the reserved faculty spot marked simply ‘Coach’ was a massive old Dodge panel van, midnight blue and with a frankly stunning mural of the Flying Dutchman painted along the sides. It was a relic from a bygone era that had no earthly business still being on the road. In spite of himself, Liam was impressed with it.

Liam had enough sense that he might normally have thought better of hopping into a strange van with someone he didn’t know exceptionally well without so much as asking where they were going. However, if pressed to name the most trustworthy adult figure in their lives, an overwhelming majority of Spooky High students would have said Coach without a second thought, and climbed into the passenger’s seat to buckle in. Coach tossed his coat and hat onto the first of no less than four rows of bench seating in the back before climbing in and starting it up. The engine roared to life without hesitation, and Coach turned his head with one arm behind Liam’s seat to look out the rear window as he backed out of the space.

As they took off, he turned on the radio, an antiquated model with wood trim whose functions consisted of AM, FM and a cassette deck. The buttons were big clunky rectangular things that clicked when pushed inward, and when powered on it was already pre-tuned to the local classic rock station, 97.6 FM WSPK, ‘The Spook’. They rode in comfortable silence for a while, not feeling the need to make awkward small talk and just enjoying, or in Liam’s case at least tolerating some good tunes. It turned out they hadn’t been going far in any case, as Coach pulled into the U-STORE-IT facility just a couple of miles away on the fringes of where the suburbs began to give way to the city.

Cruising his way over to unit J14, he slowed the van to a gradual stop and hopped out. “Yessir, I’d been meaning to stop by and grab my snow-cone maker for the summer anyhow. Perfect opportunity to let some of the vinyl get a breath of fresh air.” He fiddled with the padlock as he spoke, unfastening it and rolling up the door to reveal an 8’x8’ unit that was a little less than half full. He might have been able to get away with compressing everything into one of the smaller units and save a little money, but wouldn’t have had room to move anything around then and would’ve had to dismantle the entire thing every time he wanted to find something.

The back wall was stacked with cardboard boxes labeled with black sharpie on the sides, ‘Uncle Knick-Knack’s Summer Wardrobe,’ ‘Uncle Knick-Knack’s Winter Wardrobe,’ ‘Uncle Knick-Knack’ and the like. The left wall had a smattering of camping, fishing and miscellaneous sporting gear leaned against it. Arranged on top of and beneath a folding table pushed against the right wall were some holiday decorations, seldom-used kitchen appliances and a few paint cans. Conveniently near the front were the objects of Liam’s interest, three full and one mostly-full sturdy-looking milk crates filled with record sleeves.

“May I?” Liam gestured toward the crates, and Coach nodded while stepping around them to locate and extract his snow-cone maker. Crouching in front of them, he let his fingers begin to walk across the tops of the mildly dusty sleeves to separate them and pulling them upwards to expose the front facings one by one. His collection seemed to be an eclectic mix of blues, jazz, bluegrass, folk, funk and prog rock with a few comedy albums ranging from Richard Pryor to Robin Williams to Victor Borge. Much of it was pedestrian, which he had either heard and disregarded or been aware of and not cared to take a chance on. There were a few provocative-looking and unfamiliar finds which spoke to him, however: _In The Court of the Crimson King_ by King Crimson, _Devil on the Midnight Train to Clarksdale_ by Mashed Potato Johnson and quite possibly the strangest cover he’d ever seen, _Trout Mask Replica_ by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.

“Whoa there, young de Lioncourt!” Coach scrambled over when he saw Liam admiring the imagery of the man in the green shirt and fur vest wearing a rubber trout mask and a tall black hat, leaning over to pluck it from his hand like it was a bomb about to explode. “I don’t know that you’re quite ready for that one.”

Liam had only been considering borrowing that one, but now that he’d been challenged there was simply no way he was leaving without it. “I appreciate your concern, Coach, but why don’t you leave it for me to decide what I’m ‘quite ready for’.”

Coach frowned between the Captain and the avant garde vampire with uncertainty. “Tell you what, sport. You can take it if you also take _Safe As Milk_ and promise to start there before you dive into this.”

“I promise,” Liam solemnly swore while pulling the other Beefheart album Coach had named, with no intention of doing any such thing. He’d listen to it, certainly, but having his perceptions challenged by difficult art was what he lived for. Anything that provoked this strong of a cautious response _had_ to be worth experiencing, and as far as he was concerned the more jarring the better. It was now his intention for _Trout Mask Replica_ to be the first thing he listened to when he got home.

“Well…alright, I suppose. Just be _careful_, for heaven’s sake.” He handed the album back to Liam, who seized it greedily and placed it at the top of the small stack, now turned over so he could read the backside. “You sure you just want those four?”

“Yes, Coach. Thank you, but I don’t want to take more than I can carry.” He stood, tucking them under one arm. He very nearly dropped them which would’ve resulted in a heart attack when Coach slapped him on the back again.

“Well if you’d let Scott help you train a little, you might be able to carry more, ha! If that’s everything, then…” He opened the rear door of the van to deposit the worn-looking box containing his Snoopy snow-cone maker before turning to pull down and resecure the storage unit door. “Can I give you a lift home, or do you have someplace else to be?”

“I don’t want to take you out of your way,” Liam insisted as they were climbing back into the van. “If you’re headed into the city, I’ll hop out wherever our paths diverge if that’s alright. If you’re going the other way, can you just put me at the nearest bus stop?”

“I live in the city, so it’s no problem at all.” Once he was certain his passenger was safely belted in, they pulled away, going straight down the J-K row and turning right to come back up the H-I so as to avoid having to back out. As it turned out, Coach’s usual route home took them to a point where when he needed to turn the opposite way from Liam’s place, they were only about five blocks away so Liam opted to hop out at the corner and walk. “Be sure to let me know what you think whenever you listen to them,” he said while letting Liam out onto the curb.

“Oh, just try and stop me,” Liam said with a smirk, already planning to review them on his blog and various social media. It would take the equivalent of a severe natural disaster to keep him from sharing his opinions, at great length, whether anyone asked him to or not. “Thanks again, Coach. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He closed the door firmly, and gave a single wave of his hand as he watched the van round the corner and pull away before he started walking home.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Two hours or so later, Liam had had time to arrive home, decompress, warm up his sound system and settle into his favorite armchair with a cup of tea to listen to the album. His hair glasses had tumbled to the floor beneath the chair, his bow-tie askew with the knot nearly coming undone. The long hair he allowed to grow from the top of his head was blown straight back and stood stiffly, his hair tie having fled the scene. He sat statue-still, staring straight ahead with a look of soul-petrifying horror and diabolical fascination.

The album had ended minutes ago, and he was only now regaining enough of his faculties to be aware of the steady, soft popping of the needle on the still-spinning record. He let out a shuddering breath, and a single bloody tear holding within it all the supernal terror and unnatural despair of animate nature welled in the corner of one of his wide, unblinking eyes and spilled over to trail down his cheek. “…I wasn’t ready.”

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

The following morning, Coach sat at his desk in his office reading the day’s copy of Monstropolis’s local newspaper, _The Daily Beholder_. He looked up when he heard a knock at his door, which was open, to see a somewhat shaken-looking Liam standing sheepishly in the doorway with his eyes downcast, rubbing the back of one hand with the other. Leaning forward, he propped his elbows on his desk and steepled his fingers. “Didn’t listen to a word I said, did you, boy?”

“No…no, I did not,” Liam mumbled. As Coach pushed his chair back, rose from it and began walking around his desk, Liam braced himself for a scolding and was mildly stunned when he was pulled into a bear-hug instead. He stood stiffly and awkwardly for a moment, not sure how to accept the gesture. It had been centuries since he’d felt anything approximating a dad-hug. Finally, with nobody around to judge him he raised his arms from his sides to give Coach’s stout trunk a brief squeeze in return, and two pats indicating he was ready to be let go.

Coach eased him back with a hand resting over his shoulder. “You gonna be alright? Do you need to go have a lie-down in the nurse’s office?”

“No, thank you. I think I’ll manage, though I might sit out of dodgeball today if it’s all the same to you.” He looked up to see Coach just giving him a silent, understanding nod. “Thank you. For the pass, and the loan. I wasn’t ready to hear that, but there’s definitely something there. I think I’m going to give it another attempt after I listen to the others, and then I’ll get them back to you if that’s alright?”

“Sure, sure, take your time. I don’t need them urgently, I’ve listened to most of them a dozen times at least. Now run along, you little scamp!” He tousled Liam’s hair ever so slightly, not enough that he’d have to let down his bun and redo it in order to fix it. Liam just made a face while smoothing it down with one hand as he stepped away.

“If you tell anyone I enjoyed something you recommended, I’ll categorically deny it, but…thanks again, all the same.”

As Liam turned away and loped off at a lanky, awkward jog, Coach leaned against the doorframe of his office with his arms crossed over his chest and a satisfied little smile from having connected with one of his students. “Youth is a gift…”


End file.
